UPDATE:The magnetic filament shown erupting below appears to be connected to an active sunspot on the farside of the sun. A great way to see the farside spot is using NASA's 3D Sun app, which shows our star as a 3-dimensional globe that you can spin and inspect from any angle. Download the app and look around the globe for a hotspot labeled 'farside AR.'That's the farside active region. Another movie from SDO shows flashes of extreme ultraviolet radiation and plumes of plasma flying over the sun's northeastern limb [go to www.spaceweather.com]. These flares herald the approach of the active region. Soon, it will become an Earthside sunspot group and the eruptions, which are missing our planet now, could become geoeffective. Stay tuned for updates.

Magnetic fields snaking over the sun's northeastern limb erupted on August 18th around 01:02 UT. The M5.5 class eruption was not Earth-directed, but it could herald a significant uptick in geoeffective solar activity as the new active region turns toward Earth in the days ahead. NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory recorded the eruption: ([go to www.spaceweather.com].